Instead of screaming into the void of Twitter, I bring you a weekly highlight reel of what it’s like going places in Greater Hartford when one is gloriously car-free. These posts are on a slight time delay because nobody needs to know exactly where I am when I am there.
Is this a gorgeous protected bike path or what?
What.
This is an area for golf carts.
PERSPECTIVE
Counterpoint: The hill is the view.
BUS SHELTER GRAFFITI. . . THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Considering the wait times at this stop, it’s amazing this is the only thing scrawled.
AGGRESSIVE SIDEWALK
As long as I can remember, this sidewalk has been assertive about its space. The traffic cone is a new addition. It has at least one sidewalk soulmate in Hartford, over on Summit Street.
HELLMOUTH
Overnight it appeared, a hole in the road, larger than a grapefruit. Larger than a softball.
On a one-way street, this is generally not in a spot where people drive their cars. It is near a crosswalk, where a person is likely to step while avoiding the rough surface of the crosswalk. Between litter and leaves, the hellmouth could be disguised, a leg trap. It does not seem to matter that kids cross this intersection daily while walking to their school. [And for readers in the suburbs who can’t imagine this, yes, there are still children in America who walk to school, often without an adult monitoring them. Yes, in America, we also still have children who play in the street and who are free range. . . but when our city kids do these things, they are not protected like you’d think a Boomer’s living nostalgia trip would be. They’re pathologized, or at least, their “predicament” is, and there are attempts to shove them into one after school program or another. I think of the little boys down the street from me who, while unattended by adults, were squatting down by a patch of dirt they miraculously found, poking around with sticks. When I walked by and greeted them, they explained they were visiting with the worms they discovered. And this, in a neighborhood deemed ‘rough.’ You’ll excuse me if I don’t join in with the hysteria over roaming urban youth,]
I reported it, the hellmouth, in 311, knowing that it would be taken care of because pot holes are the only thing the City of Hartford manages to fix. There was no acknowledgement of the report, which I thought funny, so I created a new complaint request one week later when the hellmouth dilated to what I estimated as 2.5 feet in diameter. It was probably closer to three feet, but I did not want to be accused of hyperbole. Notice how it fits an empty soft drink cup and newspaper with room to spare?
The next day, a crew was out, patching the demon portal.
The day after, the hole began to reopen. Then, it snowed. What is happening under several inches of chunky ice snow? As the melt-refreeze cycle continues, it is slowly revealed, an ever-expanding, ever-sinking dent.
FANTASY
Because people can’t imagine effective, low-tech ways of removing snow from a surface, the pavement has been getting stripped from the Asylum Street bridge and left in what serves as the default bicycle lane.
I’ve been fantasizing about one day, when I am retired (LOL, I’m Gen X and retirement won’t be a thing when we get there) and have plenty of time for escapades and not caring if I spend all day in a police station, I would walk around towing a little red wagon, loading it up with all the broken car parts strewn on sidewalks, or decrepit road surface casually tossed in bike lanes. And then, I would dump piles of this trash in the middle of car lanes.
Boom, have a mattress!
Here’s a fence of mufflers.
Road is now closed due to bumpers stripped off in car crashes. You didn’t care that they impeded my progress; now, they’re your problem. Enjoy the detour. Oh, is Farmington Avenue blocked too? So sad.
Why don’t you like the mosaic of broken glass that I left in the middle of Main and Pearl?
It sounds sinister, but it’s really doing everyone a favor. I can report a muffler, bumper, and tire piled on the sidewalk, and nobody from the City comes to clean this up, and nobody even thinks to pick this up in the first place following a crash. These will remain until the wind scatters the trash or someone gets tired of looking at it. If we’re lucky, the litter is metal and a scavenger will get it quick. Glass in the bike lane? Nobody cares.
But interrupt the flow of motor vehicle traffic?! Have you seen a tree block a road in Hartford for weeks? Of course you haven’t. There’s a reason I have to dodge this on the sidewalk but never in the street.
Anyway, this is just a fantasy. I don’t have the time for this right now. Maybe my retired and semi-retired readers are looking for something to do.
CAN’T SEE THIS FROM INSIDE THE CAR
Candidate stickers are incredibly durable.
VEO better watch out. Some fucker is tagging every surface remaining.
GUTTER ARCHAEOLOGY
I don’t know what happened here, though I can say with confidence: nothing good.
It reminds me of two stories a nearby-street-neighbor recently, casually told me. Both happened within the last year or so. You know how time is these days. Two years feels like a decade or five minutes. Who can know?!
First, someone was idling their car on the street. Gas is too cheap if people are still idling their vehicles. It turns out that besides aggravating asthma and contributing to our climate crisis, this douche move also has consequences for the vehicle, sometimes. This was one of those times. This person had parked the vehicle over or adjacent to a pile of leaves. Tinder. My understanding is that there were no injuries.
Same street, another time: Ba-boom! Neighbors look outside to see a car engulfed in flames. Cop arrives, hesitates to look in vehicle. Fire department shows up, takes care of things, and concludes that there are no humans inside. There’s an investigation. Neighbors provide footage from their doorbell cameras or whatever. Nearby businesses do the same. Some young people had stolen a car, parked it on the street, then lugged gas from the station a few blocks away. Doused the vehicle in gasoline. Tossed a lit firecracker. Hey delinquents, welcome to the war on cars! [You know, it’s not a literal war, though, right?!]
Years back, I had the irritation of having to call 911 because of a car fire on the street behind my house. After giving the name of the street — which is a one-block street practically around the corner from the fire station — the operator kept asking for an address. I’m sure I said something like “It’s a fucking engulfed car. The firefighters will find it.” Because my politeness has limits, and those limits are stupid questions. I could’ve run to the fire station and verbally alerted them to the problem faster than this phone call took.
WHEN YOU’D RATHER INCONVENIENCE EVERYONE THAN PARK IN THE LOT THAT IS RIGHT THERE
BUT IF YOU INSIST ON HAVING A CAR, LET IT BE THIS
And that reminds me, I’d better watch this movie before I have to give it back to the library.
WHAT NEXT
The Sigourney/Russ/Park Terrace roundabout is about to enter its second construction phase, which means they’ll finally be adding back the bus stops that disappeared during the first phase. It also means one-way separated bike lanes here, and two-way separated bike lane on Sigourney Street (from Russ to Farmington Avenue . . . don’t get too excited . . . you know it would physically kill someone to create a fully functional bike lane anywhere in Hartford).
There is a meeting for giving input at 6 PM on March 3, 2022 via Zoom:
Meeting link: zoom.us/join
Call-in Number: 1-646-876-9923
Meeting ID: 431 387 9748
Passcode: 875 937
But if you’re like me and thinking “enough with the verkakte meetings,” you can simply email your thoughts to the DOT: andy.fesenmeyer@ct.gov
